"Why?" She shot the question back at him like a rebounding tennis ball.
"Answer that first!"
Murt opened his mouth. He could not recall ever hearing such a rude rejoinder to an invitation to dinner. Not that there had been a plethora of amenities between them, but this was unthinkable! The question was, why _should_ she have dinner with him? Give her eight good reasons. What was his motive in asking her? In one word, _why_?
Murt searched her face, but only a quiet interest showed in her expression.
"Why does any man invite any woman to dinner?" he countered.
"You aren"t _any_ man, Dr. Murt. Nor am I _any_ woman. I want your specific reason for inviting me to dinner. Is it to discuss professional matters or--what?"
"Good Lord, Dr. Sutton!" He followed her lead in using the formal address. "Man is a social animal! I would enjoy your company at dinner, that"s all. At least, I thought I would."
She looked at him unrelentingly. "If the talk will be about baseball, books or billiards, I"m for it. If it"s to be moonlight, roses and dimmed lights--no sale."
It was like asking one"s grandfather for a date. His regard for her highly professional approach turned to resentment. After all, she was a woman, a woman who persisted in belting her smock too tightly and wearing sheer nylons. Why this absurd revulsion at his casual acknowledgment of her s.e.x?
He almost withdrew the invitation, but changed his mind at the last moment. "You name the place and the subject for conversation."
She nodded. "Very well, I"ll pick you up at seven."
He had his date--with an emanc.i.p.ated female, and she didn"t let him forget it during the whole meal. The restaurant she picked was expensive, but about as romantic as a bus depot. She ordered beer instead of a c.o.c.ktail, toyed wordlessly with a $5.00 steak, and argued over the check.
Only as they were preparing to leave did she betray a sign of femininity. A platinum blonde, two tables away, had been eying Murt.
Suddenly, she lurched to her feet without a word to her escort, staggered over to the pathologist, slurred, "You"re what I"ve b"n lookin" for all m"life," and planted a wet alcoholic kiss on his mouth before he could defend himself.
Her escort peeled her away with sad-eyed apologies. There was no jealousy or anger in his face, only a deep hurt. "She--she isn"t well, I think," he said. "You know, this new--whatever it is that"s going around."
Murt wiped off the lipstick and looked at Phyllis, expecting to find at best sardonic amus.e.m.e.nt, but she seemed pale and annoyed.
"I"m sorry I brought you here," she said.
"Think nothing of it," Murt told her. "You heard the man. This is what"s going around. Do you think I"ll catch it?"
Phyllis wasn"t amused. She did let him ride the taxi to her apartment, but bade him a terse goodby at the door.
Except for the incident of the blonde and Phyl"s reaction, the evening had been a bust. Murt wondered how he had ever visualized her as a warm-blooded, responsive female. He smiled at the evening of torment she had once given him.
She was entirely frigid or else so leery of men that she might as well have been one herself.
IV
The following morning, he presided at a specialists" conference at the hospital, during which he revealed the results of the blood research.
They had all read the Health Service bulletin and were sharply interested in the photomicrographs.
When the meeting was over, Feldman, the bacteriologist, and St.i.tch.e.l.l, an endocrinologist, volunteered to work with Murt. They gave Phyllis"
"gland-irritation" theory more credence than Murt. He outlined a program. Both agreed to take the problem back to their own departments.
The conference set Murt behind in his work and he spoke scarcely five words to his a.s.sistant until he was ready to leave. As he finished scrubbing up, she handed him an early edition of the _Times_.
"Local Doctor Isolates Love Bug!" The story was sketchy and not half so positive as the headline, but it did name him and High Dawn Hospital, and described the new virus.
He stared at Phyllis Sutton. "Did you--"
"Of course not. The reporters were here, but I sent them away. I told them we were medicine men, not tobacco men."
"Your name isn"t even mentioned," he said suspiciously.
"You signed the report to the Health Service," she pointed out. "The leak probably came at that end." She put her hand on his arm. "It wasn"t your fault."
His fury cooled as he noted her gesture. Then she realized that he was looking down at her hand and withdrew it quickly.
The next few days were blindly busy. A note from the government acknowledged receipt of his report and pictures, and was followed by a message that the virus could not be identified. The implication was that there was a strong possibility that it was the causative factor in the new _malaise_.
Murt devoted more attention to the joint laboratory work on the virus.
The newspapers continued to come up with confidential information they shouldn"t have had, and they dubbed the Love Bug, _Murt"s Virus_. The name stuck, and the pathologist found himself famous overnight.
Phyllis continued to force all the credit upon him, on threat of transferring out if he violated her confidence. Except for the nuisance of dodging reporters, the accolade was not entirely unpleasant.
His pictures--old ones, Lord knew where they had dug them up--began appearing in the papers. Instead of reproving him, the hospital board voted him a substantial salary increase and gave him a free hand in directing the research. A government grant was obtained to supplement his budget, and the work picked up speed.
Necessarily, the lead that Phyllis Sutton"s early research had given them on the rest of the medical world was maintained largely because of the time lag in disseminating the information contained in Murt"s report, and the additional time it took for other clinical laboratories to confirm it.
Cages of experimental animals began arriving along with several additional specialists. Ebert Industrial Labs, contrite over the original information leak, made available their electron microscope, and Murt a.s.signed the new toxicologist to work over there with Feldman, the bacteriologist, studying ways to weaken or destroy the virus.
St.i.tch.e.l.l, the endocrinologist, and a trio of psychologists from the State University began injecting monkeys with virus when Feldman found he could propagate it in sterile medium.
On September 12, 1961, Dr. Sylvester Murt became a victim of the virus which bore his name.
He had slept poorly and he awakened feeling empty. His first dismal thought was that Phyl wouldn"t be at the hospital this morning. He had told her to spend a few hours down at Ebert Labs, getting notes on their progress.
As he shaved, dressed and breakfasted, this thought preyed on his mind.
It wasn"t until he had put in half the morning clock-watching and door-gazing that he stepped outside his wretchedness and took an objective look at his feelings.
It wasn"t that he missed her help--he had plenty of personnel at his disposal now. He simply longed for the sight of her, for the sound of her voice and her heels clipping busily around his office-lab.
_Here we go again_, he thought, and then he came up short. The feeling was similar to the silly evening of infatuation he had allowed himself, but it was intensified tenfold. The burn in his stomach was almost painful. He caught himself sighing like a frustrated poet, and he grew to hate the sight of the hall door, through which she kept right on not appearing.
When she failed to show up by 11:30, and he gagged over his lunch, he knew he was sick.